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Unemployment Rises in Advanced Economies

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By https://thehill.com on December 13th, 2011 at 10:55 am

Unemployment rates remain stubbornly high in the world’s most advanced economies, causing more headaches for policymakers trying to avoid another global recession.

Data released Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows unemployment across the group’s 34 countries rose slightly to 8.3 percent in October, from 8.2 percent the month before.

The OECD says, in total, 45.1 million people in member states were jobless in October, with some of the biggest increases in Europe.

The euro area as a whole saw its unemployment rate edge up to 10.3 percent, the highest it has been since the height of the global financial crisis.

Spain and the Netherlands saw especially big jumps in unemployment, with Spain’s jobless rate hitting 22.8 percent. Analysts fear the ongoing economic woes in Spain could soon force the eurozone’s fourth largest economy to join Greece and other countries needing international assistance.

Some OECD members did manage to lower their jobless rates. Germany’s unemployment rate fell slightly in October to 5.5 percent.

November data from the United States also showed the unemployment rate declining in the world’s largest economy, falling to 8.6 percent.

 

Source: https://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/12/13/unemployment-rises-in-advanced-economies/

Filed Under: Financial Crisis Tagged With:

Greeks Stomach Economic Crisis With Help Of ‘Starvation Recipes’

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

BY JOANNA KAKISSIS

When Eleni Nikolaidou began studying the survival diets of World War II Greece a couple of years ago, she never expected to turn the research for her master’s thesis into a cookbook.

But a lot has happened in Greece in the last two years, andStarvation Recipes is selling well in a country that’s suffering through its worst economic crisis in decades, accompanied now by painful austerity measures. The cookbook, which is in Greek, recommends chewing your food slowly to feel full, saving crumbs from the table in a jar, grinding eggplant to use as replacement “meat,” and adding chestnuts for protein to recipes such as baked cabbage.

But Greeks also hate austerity. The unemployment rate has doubled, and personal bankruptcies, homelessness and even suicides are on the rise. Greeks are lining up at soup kitchens for hot meals and for care packages of flour, rice and oil at churches.

“I’ve even seen people rummaging through the garbage for food,” Nikolaidou, a high school teacher and historian, tells The Salt. “The situation is very bleak.”

This is troubling because food here is not just about subsistence. It’s about pride and even love. In a culture known for its epic meals and generous servings, the endless plates of meze and giant pans of homemade spanakopita shared with friends and strangers represent an open heart and a bountiful home.

But building that bounty took decades, especially after the devastation of World War II. That’s a time the Greeks call thekatochi, which means “occupation,” and the word itself still conjures visions of starvation. My father and his two brotherslived in orphanages in the Peloponnese then, surviving on daily rations of wormy string beans and stale bread. Other rural Greeks lived off whatever land the Nazis didn’t burn and tried to manage with a chicken (for eggs), a skinny goat (for milk) and a few olives and figs.

But the Athenians, who were trapped in an occupied city, had it much harder. Nikolaidou says German soldiers confiscated nearly all of the food in the Greek capital, including basics such as flour, sugar and oil.

Desperate Athenians foraged for wild greens and weeds, which they ate boiled, without salt or oil. They picked through the German soldiers’ trash for potato peels. They even hunted stray cats and dogs. “They would eat anything so that they wouldn’t faint from hunger in the streets,” she says. More than 300,000 people died of starvation.

Greece still carries emotional scars from that time, so it’s not surprising that populists here call Germany’s push for austerity a symbol of a Fourth Reich. But even the angriest Greeks do not compare the horrific living conditions under the katochi (and under the devastating 1946-49 civil war that followed) with the tough times of Austerity 2011.

Evangelia Trifona, a 59-year-old housewife I met earlier this year, says she and her husband tried to open a small restaurant, which recently went bankrupt. But she says they’re managing with what they have. “We bake many loaves of bread and share it with our neighbors,” she says. “In return, they share their own food with us — casseroles, egg-lemon soup, the occasional piece of meat or fish. We never waste anything, and so far, we have not gone hungry.”

Tavernas are still busy, and cafes are packed even on weekdays — a sign that the wartime “coffee” made of ground roasted chickpeas won’t replace the real stuff anytime soon. But Greeks are changing their eating habits; they’re dining out less, buying less meat and cooking with cheaper products at home.

Nikolaidou says Starvation Recipes is resonating with those Greeks who want to make more with less. Surveys show that up to 90 percent of Greeks are changing their eating habits; they’re dining out less, buying less meat and cooking with cheaper products at home.

“They have a kilo of flour, for instance, so how do you make that flour last?” she says. Or they make a pot of fasolada, a hearty navy bean soup, that feeds a family for several days.

“Even in my house, there are no exceptions,” she says. “If my husband and son don’t like what I’ve cooked, tough. I say, ‘That’s our food. Now don’t waste it.’”

 

Source: https://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/13/143637187/greeks-stomach-economic-crisis-with-help-of-starvation-recipes

Filed Under: Financial Crisis Tagged With: ,

The Real Victims of Jon Corzine & MF Global’s Bankruptcy

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Jeff Macke

If you’re obsessed with headlines from Europe, fixated the Federal Reserve’s final policy meeting of 2011, and generally ready to tune out for the rest of the year, that’s just the way Jon Corzine wants it.

The embattled former Senator, Governor, head of Goldman Sachs (GS), and CEO of MF Global will testify again today, this time in front of his pals and former peers in the U.S. Senate. Presumably Corzine will be sternly grilled regarding how MF Global came lose $1.2 billion in client funds. Cynics and those who saw Corzine’s first Congressional testimony last week would logically expect the disgraced ex-Senator to dole out blame to others while congratulating himself for not taking the Fifth.

The gist of Corzine’s defense is that he simply couldn’t understand where the money went. It’s been a performance somewhere between a drug-addled teen trying to track down his keys and Michael Corleone’s testimony in The Godfather II. Corzine totally doesn’t know where the money is and if anyone working for MF Global did anything untoward the titular leader of the firm at the time had no way of knowing about it.

An eviscerating article in Sunday’s NY Times called into question just how hands-off Mr. Corzine was. Citing inside sources, the Times says “Mr. Corzine compulsively traded for the firm on his Blackberry during meetings, sometimes dashing out to check on the markets.”

A presumption of innocence aside, Corzine’s having been an actively trading CEO yet claiming ignorance as to the clearing and processing activities of his firm falls somewhere between implausible and the lie of a financial sociopath.

Former a market strategist for MF Global Rich Ilczyszyn (rhymes with “magician”) has firsthand experience with the firm and the impact its bankruptcy has had. Now the founder of iitrader.com, Ilczyszyn doesn’t claim to know how Mr. Corzine’s legal battle is going to turnout, but he’s willing to hazard a guess as to the reaction of his former co-workers regarding Corzine’s claim regarding the missing $1.2billion.

“I think I can speak for a lot of clients from MF and investors that used the firm, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me!’” he says.

Ilczyszyn clearly has moved on personally and professionally from MF, as have many of those employed by the firm on the trading floors. It’s the other 3,000 or so former MF employees for whom Ilczyszyn reserves his concern.

There are jobs “in this industry if you’re specifically in futures or commodities, but outside my heart goes out to all the back-office support,” he says. “All the people who helped the organization run on a daily basis; there’s a lot of folks I’m in contract with who are still seeking employment.”

Ilczyszyn is sincere in his concern, which means he outranks Corzine as a man if not in terms of their respective titles at MF Global.

The back office people are the real victims of MF Global’s collapse. They’re also the group who Corzine is putting on the hook for what is either his ineptitude or his malfeasance. When Corzine claims he never “intended” to mix client and firm funds or notes that he can’t retrace the numbers because he doesn’t have the paperwork, he’s blaming the everyday people working at a firm he lead into full-on liquidation.

Corzine’s rounds of testimony are the final insult on his way out the door from business leader to full-time defendant. The show starts at 10am; get ready to lose the remote and pass the popcorn.

 

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/real-victims-jon-corzine-mf-global-bankruptcy-131108203.html

Filed Under: Corporations, Corruption, Debt, Financial Crisis, Money, USA Tagged With:

China’s New Graduates Face Fierce Competition For Jobs

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16152372

A slowing economy is not the only problem that Chinese policymakers face.

With a dramatic rise in the number of those in higher education, many graduates are finding it tough to get the right job.

In the last decade, the number of students leaving university has increased almost six-fold.

While there are plenty of low-skilled jobs around, there are not enough jobs for graduates in the major cities, as Martin Patience reports from Beijing.

 

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16152372

Filed Under: China, Employment, Financial Crisis Tagged With:

Five Ways To Spot A Bad Boss In An Interview

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Stephanie Taylor Christensen

A boss can literally, make or break your career. Here are five ways to spot the bad ones before they become yours.

A great boss can make you feel engaged and empowered at work, will keep you out of unnecessary office politics, and can identify and grow your strengths. But a bad boss can make the most impressive job on paper (and salary) quickly unbearable. Not only will a bad boss make you dislike at least 80% of your week, your relationships might suffer, too.

A recent study conducted at Baylor University found that stress and tension caused by an abusive boss “affects the marital relationship and subsequently, the employee’s entire family.” Supervisor abuse isn’t always as blatant as a screaming temper tantrum; it can include taking personal anger out on you for no reason, dismissing your ideas in a meeting, or simply, being rude and critical of your work, while offering no constructive ways to improve it. Whatever the exhibition of bad boss behavior, your work and personal life will suffer. Merideth Ferguson, PH.D., co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Baylor explains that “it may be that as supervisor abuse heightens tension in the relationship, the employee is less motivated or able to engage in positive interactions with the partner and other family members.”

There are many ways to try and combat the effects of a bad boss, including confronting him or her directly to work towards a productive solution, suggesting that you report to another supervisor, or soliciting the help of human resources. But none of those tactics gurantee improvement, and quite often, they’ll lead to more stress. The best solution is to spot a bad boss—before they become yours! Here are five ways to tell whether your interviewer is a future bad boss.

1. Pronoun usage. Performance consultant John Brubaker says that the top verbal tell a boss gives is in pronoun choice and the context it is used. If your interviewer uses the term “you” in communicating negative information ( such as, “you will deal with a lot of ambiguity”), don’t expect the boss to be a mentor. If the boss chooses the word “I” to describe the department’s success—that’s a red flag. If the interviewer says “we” in regards to a particular challenge the team or company faced, it may indicate that he or she deflects responsibility and places blame.

2. Concern with your hobbies. There is a fine line between genuine relationship building, and fishing for information, so use your discretion on this one. If you have an overall good impression of the potential boss it may be that he or she is truly interested in the fact that you are heavily involved in charity work, and is simply getting to know you. On the other hand, the interviewer may be trying to determine whether you have too many commitments outside of work. The interviewer can’t legally ask if you are married, or have kids, so digging into your personal life can be a clever way to understand just how available you are.

3. They’re distracted. The era of email, BlackBerrys and smartphones have made it “okay” for people to develop disrespectful communication habits in the name of work. Particularly in a frenzied workplace, reading email while a person is speaking, multi-tasking on conference calls and checking the message behind that blinking BlackBerry mid-conversation has become the norm of business communications. But, regardless of his or her role in the company, the interviewer should be striving to make a good impression—which includes shutting down tech tools to give you undivided attention. If your interviewer is glancing at emails while you’re speaking, taking phone calls, or late to the interview, don’t expect a boss who will make time for you.

4. They can’t give you a straight answer. Caren Goldberg, Ph.D. is an HR professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University. She says a key “tell” is vague answers to your questions. Listen for pauses, awkwardness, or overly-generic responses when you inquire what happened to the person who held the position you are interviewing for, and/or what has created the need to hire. (For example, if you are told the person was a “bad fit,” it may indicate that the workplace doesn’t spend much time on employee-development, and blames them when things don’t work out).

You should also question turnover rates, how long people stay in given roles, and what their career path has been. All of these answers can indicate not only if the boss is one people want to work for, but whether pay is competitive, and employees are given a career growth plan.

5. They’ve got a record. Ask the potential boss how long he or she has been at the company, in the role, and where he or she worked before coming to it to get a feel for his or management style, and whether it’s what you respond to. For example, bosses making a switch from a large corporation to a small company may lead with formality. On the other hand, entrepreneurs tend to be passionately involved in business, which can be a help or a hindrance, depending on your workstyle.

Goldberg also recommends searching the site eBossWatch, where you read reviews that former employees have given to a boss. If you’re serious about the position, she also suggests reaching to the former employee whose spot you are interviewing for, and asking for their take on the workplace. (LinkedIn makes this task easy to do). The former employee’s recount may not necessarily reflect your potential experience, but it can help you to determine whether his or her description of the job and company “jibes” with what the potential boss said.

 

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniechristensen/2011/12/11/5-ways-to-spot-a-bad-boss-in-an-interview/

Filed Under: Employment Tagged With: ,

World Banker Makes Stunning Confession

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Video Everyone Needs To See, But For Different Reasons… The Former President Of The World Bank, James Wolfensohn, Makes Stunning Confessions As He Addresses Graduate Students At Stanford University.

He Reveals The Inside Hand Of World Domination From Past, To The Present And Into The Future. The Speech Was Mas Made January 11Th, 2010. The Next 19 Minutes May Open Your Mind To A Very Deliberate World.

He Tells The Grad Students What’s Coming, A “Tectonic Shift” In Wealth From The West To The East. But He Doesn’t Tell The Students That It Is His Institution, The World Bank, That’s Directing And Channeling These Changes.

Wolfensohn’s Own Investment Firm Is In China, Poised To Profit From This “Imminent Shift” In Global Wealth.

 

 

Filed Under: Banks, Financial Crisis Tagged With:

Britain’s High Streets Reach ‘Crisis Point’

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

More than 50% of total consumer spend is now off British high streets for the first time in history.

The shock statistic is revealed with the publication of a report compiled by Mary Portas, star of the BBC’s Mary Queen of Shops programme.

The retail expert has come up with a plan to rejuvenate Britain’s ailing high streets, some of which she claims are in crisis.

Her independent review, carried out at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron, also maintains that town centre vacancy rates have doubled over the past two years.

“I believe that our high streets have reached a crisis point. Unless urgent action is taken, much of Britain will lose, irretrievably, something that is fundamental to our society, and which has real social and economic worth to our communities,” she said.

“I would like to state from the start that this report is not about pointing fingers of blame.

“While I do believe that there are many compelling instances where out-of-town retail has drained the traffic and shopping trade from our town centres, it would be naive and far too easy simply to think that they are to blame for the decline of our high streets.

“The fact is that the major supermarkets and malls have delivered highly convenient, needs-based retailing, which serves today’s consumers well.

“Sadly, the high streets didn’t adapt as quickly or as effectively. Now they need to.”

Ms Portas has called for change and recommends licensing rules on high street stalls be relaxed and that a national market day be introduced.

She also wants free parking in certain areas, some form of high street management system to form coherent policies, as well as a review of business rates and shop rents.

Tom Ironside from the British Retail Consortium agrees that there is much to be done.

“There are some long-standing challenges facing the high street locations which include planning, transport, safety and security and also the cost of doing business in high street locations as well,” he said.

“All of those need to be tackled if we’re to get to a situation where our towns and city centres can thrive.

“Certainly where new business rates come into play we think that there’s a real role for a better business rates regime in supporting new businesses as they come forward.

“But business rates need to be cheaper for everyone. At the moment they go up very quickly year-on-year and we want to see that take place in a much more affordable way.”

In the Worcestershire market town of Pershore rates for small businesses have been frozen.

Those small businesses with a rateable value of £6,000 and under will pay no business rates at all until March 2013.

High street butcher Dave Goodyear said: “It has been a lifeline. Without that freeze, a lot of people would have sunk and gone under. But this is just what the independent trade needs.”

Despite the pressures of out of town shopping centres, supermarkets and the internet, Pershore is now fairing well.

Ms Portas added: “The phenomenal growth of online retailing, the rise of shopping by mobile, the speed and sophistication of the major national and international retailers, the epic and immersive experiences offered by today’s new breed of shopping mall, combined with a crippling recession, have all conspired to change today’s retail landscape.

“New expectations have been created in terms of value, service, entertainment and experience against which the average high street has, in many cases, failed to deliver.

“The only hope our high streets have of surviving is to recognise what has happened and to provide something new.”

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/britains-high-streets-reach-crisis-point-003705028.html

Filed Under: Consumerism, Economy, Financial Crisis, United Kingdom Tagged With:

The Spirit of Revolution

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

17-year-old Andrew Barrows invokes the spirit of the Founding Fathers to question America’s current direction.

I want to start with some quotes from past presidents of the United States Of America, as well as important activists who discussed freedom and oppression.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free. - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington (1732-1799)

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

Now I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

I think about the American Revolution, and how many people have fought and died to make America, and what the American Revolution was all about. I constantly ponder the thought of, “I really wonder how past presidents would react to the way America is now.” I can imagine Abraham Lincoln or George Washington being brought back to life to experience modern America for just a day. But I can’t begin to imagine his facial expression when I would tell him:

Yeah, since all of your wonderful truth speaking, caring about the people, and doing what is right and fair to give people extraordinary documents dedicated to freedom…America has really gone down hill…and I mean…really down hill.

Being a president today actually means who’s the best liar on the stage. It is like a highschool talent show. Each person goes on stage and tries to convince the audience to like them, and whoever lies the most wins. They are just puppets who can’t really do anything. Congressional approval is 8% and WE the people don’t actually get a say in what happens. The mega rich call the shots and huge companies actually control what the government does while the middle class and poor get robbed blind.

After I would study his confusion…I would continue…

The Patriot Act

(After explaining what a phone and the Internet is). Gives the government the power to read my emails, my text messages, track my phone, follow me, tap my phone calls, install a tracking device under my car to know my exact location. In short…violate my privacy completely.

Then I would discuss the SOPA/PROTECT IP ACT.

A bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the Net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

Next of course, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons forever without offering them the right to legal counsel or even a trial. This isn’t a totally new thing: “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla spent three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” until he was finally charged. But Padilla’s detention was unusual and sparked a huge outcry; the new provisions would standardize his treatment and enable us all to become Jose Padillas.

Than I would probably make him watch this video on YouTube: “A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945″ by Isao Hashimoto

 

 

Than I would explain having a gun, missing fingers, or 7 days of food at your house = YOU ARE A TERRORIST

You know, at this point he would probably be on his knees with a huge headache.

I’m sure eventually he would say something like “Why are the people allowing this to happen? And what happened to people fighting for what is right?”

Than I would explain the Anonymous Internet group and the Occupy movement and protests. I think he would be pretty happy and would get up off his knees.

BUT than I would show him videos of what is happening when people are trying to protest and spread truth. I would start probably with this video:

or this video:

 

It’s really hard to choose which video of police attacking innocent protesters expressing their Constitutional rights I would show because, honestly, YouTube is filled with them. So I would probably just let him browse around for a while.

Now at this point I would imagine he would pretty much scream or yell that everything that past Americans had fought for to create has been literally bashed by the people who are supposed to enforce it, and has been turned around and used against the people instead of protecting them.

Than I would get Paul Revere out of my time machine/life regeneration thing and Paul Revere would jump on his horse and ride through the city streets of Boston yelling “The British aren’t coming; they are already here!

“Would our Founding Fathers be disgraced at what America has become? Is everything they fought for now becoming useless?

Would they call for a revolution?

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/spirit-of-revolution.html#more

Filed Under: Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Crime, Financial Crisis, Imperialism, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Nuclear, Occupy, Politicians, Protests, Radiation, Revolution, Rights, Science, Social Unrest, Surveillance, Technology, USA, War Tagged With:

Giving Birth Is A Battle For Survival In Afghanistan

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - She was 15 years old, heavily pregnant and had travelled eight days on the back of a donkey to reach hospital.

Suffering from seizures and high blood pressure, she died soon after at the Herat Maternity Hospital in western Afghanistan, one of the thousands of women who die in the country each year from causes linked to pregnancy and birth.

“She came at a late stage and we couldn’t help her,” said Somayeh, a midwife at the hospital and herself just 21. “She was already in a coma.”

Politicians, economists and activists from around the world met in Bonn this month to thrash out their vision for battered and impoverished Afghanistan. In addition to the insurgency and violence, it remains the most dangerous place in the world for a woman to have a baby, the latest World Health Organization data shows.

The figures are distressing, but still a marked improvement on the situation 10 years ago. The latest available WHO data, from 2008, shows the number of women who died giving birth had dipped to 1,400 per 100,000 live births from 1,800 in 2000.

The Ministry of Public Health says it has made maternal health a priority, supporting training schemes that have lifted the number of qualified midwives in the country to 3,000 from just 400, and expanding emergency delivery services.

“We have demonstrated that these strategies can work in Afghanistan. They can bring a change in the lives of women and families,” acting public health minister Suraya Dalil says. “The challenge is to sustain those achievements.”

Charities such as World Vision — which trained Somayeh — and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) also have in-depth programs to help new mothers across Afghanistan.

But they worry that the planned drawdown of Western troops and funds — all foreign combat soldiers will be gone by the end of 2014, and a large chunk of aid budgets is expected to go with them — could jeopardise the modest gains of the last decade.

Without foreign cash to bolster scarce government funds, midwife training will almost certainly drop off, while aid groups may leave if they cannot operate in safety. MSF closed its Afghan operations in 2004 after five team members were killed, although the group has since returned.

“The greatest risk at present is through aid levels dropping off precipitously,” says Sarah Pickworth, a public health specialist who has worked extensively in Afghanistan.

“Without sufficient funding, there is likely to be a significantly slower pace of change. This risks losing the momentum of the tremendous gains made.”

SECURITY DEADLINE

Faced with an appalling death toll among pregnant women and new mothers, communities in rural areas — which have some of the highest mortality rates — have mobilised to help women.

Herat’s Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) has trained 256 midwives in the past seven years through schemes largely supported by charities such as World Vision. Many of its students have been deliberately selected from remote villages.

But if Herat is hit by violence, the families are likely to take their daughters out of school and take them home to safety.

A deterioration in the security situation would likely hit pregnant women as well as midwife training.

Transporting women in labour from rural areas to clinics is already a tough proposition in a country where few can afford cars and roads are scarce and badly maintained. It will become still harder if gunmen have freer rein to target travellers.

The re-emergence in political life of groups like the Taliban, which banned education and the free movement of women, could also have a devastating effect on death rates.

Under their influence, a generation of potential female midwives and doctors has already been lost, midwife trainers say. This is particularly devastating in a country where male doctors treating women is still largely taboo.

PLUGGING THE GAP

But as big a problem for Afghanistan is money. The Afghan government is facing a $7 billion hole in its budget after 2014, which it will need to pay for security and other services. It is relying on foreign help to plug that gap.

The grinding poverty in which many women live means hygiene and nutrition are often poor. A recent survey showed only around half of Afghans have access to clean drinking water, and only a fifth use approved toilet and sanitation facilities.

The IHS’ deputy director, Dr Ehrary, says money is a major stumbling block to completing the five further rounds of midwife training he calculates are needed to provide a base number of healthcare professionals in the region.

“Training is not difficult, but finding funds is difficult,” he says. The institute is struggling to train this year’s government-recommended quota of midwives to the right standard.

“We told the ministry we could not run the class this year because we have only three teachers and we cannot meet their standards,” he added. “They have now been funded. We found another donor, (German humanitarian group) Cap Anamur.”

If meetings like the Bonn conference fail to deliver a plan for action on poverty and some kind of roadmap to stability, the fragile gains in maternal healthcare could easily slip away.

In rural Herat, villagers say they are determined to stop that happening. After decades of upheaval and war, they are tired of death and violence and want a safer future.

“Everybody hopes there will be no more war in Afghanistan,” says one senior shura, or village council, member from rural Herat. “The first thing we want is safety, the second is to improve people’s health. We need doctors — we need midwives.”

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/giving-birth-battle-survival-afghanistan-101333359.html

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Economy, Health, Poverty, Sexism, Women Tagged With: , , ,

Gerald Celente: We’re Going Into An Economic 9/11

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The new job numbers are out for the month of November. The Labor Department announced that unemployment is declining and was 8.6 percent for last month.

Roughly 120 thousand private jobs were created in the month of November, but critics say retail and hospitality jobs aren’t the type of jobs America needs.

Others say that this doesn’t make up for the new people joining the workforce.

Gerald Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal, sounds off on the issue.

 

Filed Under: 9/11, Banks, Debt, Economy, Financial Crisis, Income Inequality, Money, USA
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